“Soon? Then you won’t be here much longer?”
Greenoak’s quick ear caught a shade of disappointment in the tone, almost of consternation. Then Dick’s departure would cause a blank; for of course she knew that the two were moving about together.
“You must remember we’ve been here a good while already,” he answered, “and there’s such a thing as wearing out one’s welcome. Besides, I want to show the young one some further sides of the life of the country.”
“No fear of your wearing out anything of the kind here,” rejoined Hazel, quickly. “As for the other consideration, well, that counts for something, I suppose. Here we are.”
Their uphill progress was at an end. They had reached a high, stony neck, or saddle, between two great crags. In front the slope fell abruptly away for over a thousand feet to a spread of rolling plains, sparsely bushed, and extending for miles and miles. Here and there, at long intervals, a thread of smoke, rising from homestead or native kraal, ascended, but for an immensity of distance the expanse lay, monotonous in its green-brown roll, intersected, in darker line, by the willow-fringed banks of a nearly dry river-bed. Beyond, in the clear atmosphere, seeming about twenty miles distant, though fully fifty, rose mountain piles, flat-topped, in massive walls, or breaking off into turreted cones. Northward others, more distant still, floating apparently in mid-air, owing to the mirage-like effect of distance and clearness, but everywhere a sense of grand, open, unbounded space. The far-away bark of a dog, or the disturbed crowing of cock koorhaans, came up out of the stillness. On the side from which they had ascended was the vast, crater-like hollow, the tangle of rugged and bush-grown kloofs, and slopes covered with forest trees rising to lap in wave-bound verdure the grim iron faces of red rock walls and castellated crags. It was a scene that in the balmy yet exhilarating air of the cloudless day one could sit there and revel in for ever.
“You can almost see our place from here,” said Hazel. “That kopje just shuts it off, and you wouldn’t think it was forty miles as the crow flies. This is a favourite perch of mine. I often used to climb up here.”
“Did you drag your uncle up, too?”
“Oh yes. He’d ride though. But he doesn’t care a rap for scenery. He’d light his pipe, and in about ten minutes be fast asleep.”
“I’ll light mine, but I promise you I won’t go to sleep.”
“No, don’t. You must talk to me instead. Tell me some of your experiences. You must have had so many, and such wonderful ones.”